Beck's 'Plan' Will Feature Fake History On Church-state Separation From David Barton

Beck then describes "The Plan," which he says is
analogical to "lifeboats" on the Titanic: He says he's assembling a team
of "experts" to help him shape a movement that will produce
GlennBeckian electoral victories in 2010. (Obviously, that NY-23
experiment didn't turn out so hot.) These experts are being hired to
work on policy areas such as the economy, the environment, national
security, etc.

Beck: And what I've done, is I've found two really smart
people in each category, two really -- oh, they just have all kinds of
experience. And then I have coupled them with one rebel -- one radical. I
hear that's popular to be a radical now.

But these radicals are not the radicals wearing the Che T-shirts. These radicals are the ones wearing the Jefferson T-shirts!

Beck had already displayed a propensity to traduce history in order
to push his thesis that the progressive movement is the Enemy of
America, which recently reached full flower in his pseudo-documentary based on Jonah Goldberg's pseudo-history portraying progressives as the font of all the great genocides of the past century.Will Bunch reports
that this fondness for fake history is about to extend to church-state
separation issues -- and will tread into territory long hold by
far-right extremists.

Bunch reports that Beck has released the first concrete details about Beck's "experts" for "The Plan":

It is an eight hour event. You and I on stage with three different experts. David Barton is going to be the first one and we're going to talk about the meaning of faith in America.
All the lies that you have been told, that this isn't a nation of
faith, that religion played no role. I'm you will be stunned when you
learn and see the real history that is no longer taught.

As Bunch notes:

The real reason that history "is no longer taught" is because...it's bogus.

As Will explains:

Barton is the founder of a Texas-based group called the
WallBuilders, a foundation devoted to proving that the roots of the
United States and its Constitution are not based on the separation of
church of state -- as is widely believed and widely taught -- but as
country built upon a bedrock of Christianity. That is also the premise
of a widely circulated book that Barton published in the 1990s called
"The Myth of Separation" -- a book that was eventually re-written and
issued under a different name because it was larded with bad
information, some of which nevertheless became gospel on conservative
talk radio. As noted in the 2006 Texas Monthly article (via Nexis):

In 1995 the historian Robert Alley attempted to trace the
provenance of a quote that Rush Limbaugh had mistakenly attributed to
James Madison, in which Madison purportedly called the Ten Commandments
the foundation of American civilization. All roads led to David Barton,
whose The Myth of Separation attributed the following quote to Madison:
"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the
power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of
our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self
government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves,
to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten
Commandments of God." Barton cited two sources for the quote: a 1939
book by Harold K. Lane called Liberty! Cry Liberty! and Frederick
Nyneyer's 1958 book First Principles in Morality and Economics:
Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association. Alley couldn't find
the quote anywhere in Nyneyer's book, however, and eventually concluded
that Barton had pulled it from an article in a journal with the unlikely
title Progressive Calvinism, which, in turn, had attributed it to
something called the "1958 calendar of Spiritual Mobilization." In any
case, Alley reported, the editors of Madison's papers were unable to
find anything in his writings that was even remotely similar. "In
addition," they added, "the idea is inconsistent with everything we know
about Madison's views on religion and government, which he expressed
time and time again in public and in private."

Barton previously appeared on Fox News' show hosted by Mike Huckabee, to promote the same nonsense. And as we noted then:

[I]t take only a little research to uncover the fact that Barton has a history of specious research. For years his book, The Myth of Separation
-- which he's been selling since the early '90s -- has featured bogus
quotes, made-up nonsense, and flat-out falsified history that has been
dismantled time and again. Rob Boston debunked Barton thoroughly back then, and his methodology has not improved measurably since. (Here's a page devoted to exposing Barton's multitude of bogus quotations from the Founding Fathers.)

Moreover, as Boston notes, Barton has a long history of dalliances with the extremist fringes of the far right...

But Barton's biggest whopper concerns Thomas Jefferson,
who coined the metaphor "wall of separation between church and state."
Jefferson used that phrase in an 1802 letter to the Danbury (Conn.)
Baptist Association. According to Barton, Jefferson went on to add that
the "wall" was meant to be "one directional," protecting the church from
the state but not the other way around, and, furthermore, that it was
intended to keep "Christian principles in government."

This is a complete fabrication, and if Barton would take the time to
actually read Jefferson's letter he would see that he is simply wrong.
Jefferson's letter says nothing about the wall being "one directional"
and certainly does not assert that it was meant to keep "Christian
principles" in government. Such sentiments appear nowhere in the body of
Jefferson's writings or speeches. In fact, they conflict sharply with
our third president's well known advocacy of church-state separation and
religious freedom.

As Will notes, none of this has fazed supposedly mainstream conservatives when it comes to helping promote Barton:

Needless to say, none of these controversies derailed
Barton's career as a rising star in either the evangelical movement or
the Republican Party. In fact, for most of the 2000s, he served as vice
chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, where he's also been a
leading fundamentalist voice in that state's ever-raging debate over
school textbooks. The national GOP hired Barton as a consultant in the
2004 election, and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas said Barton's "research
provides the philosophical underpinning for a lot of the Republican
effort in the country today — bringing God back into the public square."

Beck has already established quite a track record when it comes to
mainstreaming right-wing extremism. This will just add to it in a big
way.

Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.